Confessions: The Meanest Thing Gizmodo Did at CES — CES has no shortage of displays. And when MAKE offered us some TV-B-Gone clickers to bring to the show, we pretty much couldn't help ourselves. We shut off a TV. And then another. And then a wall of TVs. And we just couldn't stop.

Gizmodo Prank at CES. Victims may be bloggers — The clever hacks at Gizmodo pulled a prank at CES making all those TV screens go blank all at once, then filming and posting it, I assume very much to their own sophomoric satisfaction. As Webware Rafe Needleman put it:

Facebook Founder Says “Beacon” Needs Work — Also Tells 60 Minutes It's Unlikely Company Will Go Public in 2008 — (CBS) The controversial advertising device many accused of invading the privacy of Facebook users will eventually be a good tool, says Facebook founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg.

Believe it or not, Mahalo is Growing — Human-built search engine Mahalo appears to be shooting past the traffic numbers it got when it launched, according to Heather Hopkins at traffic analyst firm Hitwise. — Mahalo pages are collections of the most useful links regarding a wide variety of timely topics in popular niches.

Wikia Launch & Mahalo Growth — This week's launch of Wikia Search is the latest example of a human powered search engine. Mahalo and Cha-Cha are two other recent entrants. This week we've seen a spike in daily visits to Wikia Search, as you'd expect. In my digging the thing that stood as interesting to me is Mahalo's growth.

Bebo's Platform Now Open for All Developers — Almost a month ago to the day, social network Bebo announced its developer platform. Or rather, a clone of Facebook's developer platform. The idea was to copy Facebook's platform so that developers wouldn't have to relearn a new one and rebuild …

Google Checkout Trends — Google Trends allows you to enter keywords and phrases to compare what users have been searching for over a specified time period. Now, the Official Google Checkout Blog has just announced that they've launched their own version which lets you see what people have been buying using Google Checkout:

Amazon Completes DRM-Free Roster With Sony-BMG — For anyone who was bummed about the hoops they were going to have to jump through to get DRM-free songs from Sony-BMG artists, by the end of the month you will be able to download those songs at Amazon's MP3 store.

Tata Nano: The World's Cheapest Car — (Photo by Money Sharma/European Pressphoto Association) — Tata Motors today took the covers off the world's cheapest car — the Nano. — Over the past year, Tata has been building hype for a car that would cost a mere 100,000 rupees (roughly $2,500) …

The Music Industry's Last Stand Will Be A Music Tax — It is becoming more and more difficult for the music industry to ignore the basic economics of the their industry: unenforceable property rights (you can't sue everyone) and zero marginal production costs (file sharing is ridiculously easy).

MicroHoo? YaBay? No Deal! — Look, I love a good takeover rumor as much as the next gossipy reporter. — But all the incessant rumblings of Microsoft sniffing around to buy Yahoo or Yahoo merging with eBay are getting a tad ridiculous. — So, Deal or No Deal? Um, no deal, Howie!